Fabulous friends, burning both ends of the candle and nervous exhaustion!

I’m thrilled to announce that there’s been no life threatening fires or floods in my flat for the last week or so. And, I didn’t have to sacrifice my plumber. Which was just as well really as he seems to be the least incompetent one I’ve come across, so that’s a relief.

Productivity has been low. Socialising and burning the candle at both ends has been high. I have absolutely fabulous friends and it’s been heart-wrenching saying goodbye! Or well, not goodbye I hope really.

It’s been a whirlwind of leaving do’s! I had a lovely dinner at Diwani’s with my extended team – there were about 10 of us I think. Diwani’s is the best Indian buffet place in the world. AND it’s all vegetarian 🙂 Then there was a surprise night out with the badminton crowd from work which was excellent. We went to a place called Bounce. Doubles table tennis makes not a jot of sense. That’s of course why I lost almost all of the games. No other reason.

Pub club leaving do was last night (Piccadilly Institute) and it might be the best night out I’ve had ever 🙂 I will really miss Pub Club (my liver will most certainly not). They went to great lengths to be sweet and lovely and I couldn’t be more touched! They must REALLY want free Italian holidays 😉

The general work leaving do is Wednesday – it’ll be in a pub near work. Not sure how many will make it out– there’s a few folk that have that week off.

And then I leave the flat Thursday to move in with Mum & Dad for a bit. I need to desperately study – I’m really REALLY struggling with the Day Skipper course on the rare occasion I get to do anything on it. An example question: Plot a course between x and y bearing in mind the length of time it will take, the tidal streams throughout the trip, gale force winds from a southerly direction at the start but changing lots throughout the trip to be in different directions and at different levels, also bearing in mind that North isn’t indeed North (WHO KNEW COMPASSES DON’T ACTUALLY POINT NORTH FOR GOODNESS SAKES?! It actually turns out, most people. I must have been off sick during that lesson) and you need to apply a correction, and then another correction to account for the fact that your boat might also be messing with the compass and then you obviously need to avoid rocks/the seabed/other obstacles. By the time I’ve plotted the damn course, it’ll be the following week and all of the conditions will have changed.

So that’s going marvelously.

However, one stroke of luck is that I’ll now be out over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend at some point on a boat with a stranger. I’ll be annoyed if come my glorious retirement from Project Management and a stressful move out of my flat, I’m murdered two days later and cast into the watery depths of the Solent. Though at least I wouldn’t have to do the Day Skipper Theory so it’d not be all bad.

My exam is on the 7th April and the practical course starts on the 8th April in Gosport. Then I’m going to wait until the beginning of May before being Italian Bound. My Facebook countdown will be in minus figures! Having said that, I certainly underestimated the scope for a nervous breakdown / exhaustion when setting the timescales. I hope not to get out of bed in the two weeks after my practical course and before Italy.

I HAVE DECK SHOES! Look at these. Admittedly, these aren’t actually my deck shoes but they look similar. Mine are nicer 🙂 They were a very sweet leaving present from a friend. I thought deck shoes were all repulsive but aren’t they nice?!

The Saga of The Leaking Toilet is resolved – I’d stood on the wooden thing that boxes in the cistern and pushed out the pipe which connects the water to the bowl. It’s now held in place with foamy stuff.

If I’ve not been murdered over Easter, there’s a chance I might actually succumb to early onset dementia. Last week, I needed to get from Paddington to Embankment. That’s a single southbound trip on the Bakerloo tube line. I got on at Paddington and as the doors were closing, I realised I’d got on the wrong direction. What a twit (or variants) I am, I thought. But easily done. I got off at the next stop and faffed around trying to find the tube going in the opposite direction (by the way any Tube Bosses reading this – your signage is poor at Warwick Avenue) and sat down and read until I got to my intended stop. A few minutes later, noticing I had not got to my intended stop, I looked up and I was even further NORTH. NORTH!!!! ARGH!!!!!! I’d been on the right tube in the first place! I hope someone will feed me when I’m unable to remember where my mouth is.

Mum and dad are coming up tomorrow to take stuff back home. The Room of Chaos (aka “Dining room”) is fulfilling its name nicely. And I’ve run out of boxes so it’s doubling up as a sort of large assorted game of jenga. I need to sort that out tonight. Lucky I’m feeling in such tip top condition after last night’s drunken lateness and what must now be several weeks without sleep <sigh>!